Every January I parse out what I want from the coming year. Sometimes this takes the form of a written list of goals; other times I sketch out ideas and possibilities that aren’t just for the coming year but beyond. When I entered high school, I had goals I wanted to accomplish spanning all four years. In undergrad I did the same, adjusting each year and checking back in with how far I’d come. These visions of the future, possibilities of what might be, delighted me as much as they terrified me.
Movements, organizations, and politics are dictated by competing visions of the possible future. Possibilities make us feel a part of something greater and better. Possibilities spur us to do great things even in the face of terrible odds. Possibilities lead us toward liberation, allowing us to breathe even as the oppressor grinds their boot on our necks. When we in the UCC envision a Just World for All, we ask what that actually looks like. We talk not just to each other, but to those we have nothing in common with. In the confluence, we dream up a just world for all with the necessary emphasis on all.
In my Evangelical tradition, the book of Revelation was a carefully pored over manual on Eschatology. Millennialism and its other forms became the battlegrounds for the time leading up to a new Heaven and Earth. Now, I understand the apocalyptic rhetoric of John during his exile on Patmos as a canonized microcosm of the apocalyptic tradition of the era. An era in which a vast empire ruled with an iron fist and a divine mandate. Visions of the end of that empire, visions of justice, and of accountability proliferated. And in their midst were revolutionary visions of future possibilities, symbolic and majestic, that incorporated justice and peace to form something beautiful. Thus, we read of lions laying down with lambs and of swords beaten into plowshares. A grand city and a world in which there are no more tears.
For two thousand years, Christianity has made its mark on the West and imperialized much of the known world. An empire that rules with the iron fist of capitalism and faux democracy with a presumed divine mandate. Coupled with a postmodern world in which the acceleration of history necessitates apocalyptic rhetoric, it is time we revisited John’s Revelation.
We must imagine an end, and then a new beginning for Christianity itself. Not with the small hope of merely subsisting, but with great and powerful visions of the future for our denomination and the Church Universal. What do you envision as a just world for all? What grand dreams – literal and symbolic – give you hope? Imagine the fruition of possibilities. But don’t stop there. Share your visions with others. Share your visions with those inside and outside your congregation. Write, talk, create art around them. Test them with the visions of others and find intersectional community. That is the way we find the future together. A Just World for All.